\nAbout The Role\n\n\nYard Stick is looking for a Director of Business Development to help us fight climate change with soil.\nTo date, two-ish people have done the bulk of Yard Stick’s customer discovery, business development, commercial strategy-setting, and selling: Chris Tolles (CEO)  and Kelsey Chan (Head of Growth + Partnerships). To accomplish our ambitious climate impact and commercial revenue goals, Yard Stick must transition from being primarily a founder-led sales effort to one with dedicated team members and expertise 100% focused on growing the company’s top line. We have demonstrated incredible early traction and are ready to accelerate our efforts to win more and bigger contracts for work in our wheelhouse, namely soil C stock quantification on row crop and grazing agricultural soils in the US. \n\n\nWe’re looking for a biz dev powerhouse to build on our existing foundation and take commercial growth to the next level. This person will get inside the heads and hearts of our customers, build trust with prospects (often over months and longer!), iterate on our marketing/messaging for maximum resonance, craft home-run proposals, and generally sell the shit out of our offering.\n\n\nThis role must both be the type to knock down a door driving toward a signed contract, and be incredibly curious and empathetic in the way they collaborate with other Yard Stick stakeholders, both external and internal. It will start as a 100% IC role with potential to grow into a team lead for the right person, but the most compelling candidate must be thrilled if it doesn’t become a management role for even a few years.\n\n\nThis full-time remote role will report to Kelsey Chan, starting ASAP in 2025. To get specific, we have an all-company onsite planned for Feb 25-27, so ideally this role starts on Feb 25. 😳\n\n\nIf you have expertise in this domain, thrive in a high growth startup environment, and are ready to advance our soil carbon mission, read on!\n\n\n\n\nAbout Yard Stick PBC\n\n\nYard Stick is a remote-first climate tech startup with a hardware lab in Oakland, CA and team members all over the US. We are on a mission to reverse climate change with agriculture. Scientists and farmers alike know that climate-friendly agricultural practices have the potential to remove atmospheric CO2 at gigaton/year scale. When these practices are adopted, more carbon is stored in soils, improving soil health and fighting climate change. But significant measurement challenges have held soil carbon efforts back - until now.\n\n\nBy reducing the cost of soil carbon measurement by 70-90%, Yard Stick will dramatically expand the opportunities for evidence-based regenerative practices to simultaneously improve ecosystem health, increase farmer income, and combat climate change. \n\n\nCurrent soil carbon measurement technologies are slow, expensive, and cumbersome, relying on conventional soil cores and labs to quantify carbon stocks. In contrast, Yard Stick is fast and cheap - without sacrificing accuracy. As a testament to our technology’s potential, alongside our scientific collaborators, we were awarded $18M across six USDA Climate-Smart Commodities projects, and we have additional grant financing from ARPA-E, NSF, CDFA, and other discerning grant-makers. We’ve also raised another nearly $18M from top climate VCs, including Toyota Climate Venture Fund, Lowercarbon Capital, Breakthrough Energy Ventures (Bill Gates’ climate fund), Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Extania, Pillar VC, MCJ Collective… the list goes on!\n\n\nFor more background, check out some coverage of Yard Stick in TechCrunch, Fast Company, and AgFunder, and see this snazzy Microsoft-produced video as well.\n\n\nWe offer competitive salary and equity (benchmarked to 75th percentile of high-growth US tech compensation), health/dental/vision insurance, a 401k, and home-office reimbursements. We have many team members with young families and have a strong track record of creative, flexible approaches to hours and communication expectations which let folks feel great about their commitments both to Yard Stick and their lives outside of work. \n\n\nWe’re also a PBC, or public benefit corporation, which is an alternative corporate structure which protects our ability to prioritize climate impact over profits if the two are in conflict. You can read more about PBCs in this article which also specifically features Yard Stick.\n\n\n\nResponsibilities\n* Sell large, well-fit projects: Sales at Yard Stick is a more-complex process of understanding customer requirements, educating prospects regarding options, and iterating on pricing and project format in a collaborative mode. That said, the #1 KPI for this role is revenue signed, so with the right raw materials (e.g. tech maturity, basic market assets, strategic clarity), which you’ll help create and refine, you’ll win big soil carbon measurement contracts for the company quickly and consistently. You’ll identify the right customer targets, create account and customer segment strategies, plan outreach, present demos and proposals, negotiate contracts, and assist in smooth handoff to our Customer Success team as projects kick off. \n* Build and own a healthy sales pipeline: You know the company goals and will execute effective inbound and outbound sales strategies to meet them. You will identify and qualify high quality leads and will prioritize and manage this pipeline in HubSpot with meticulous data hygiene and reporting used on the reg for all-team alignment. \n* Inform overall commercial and product strategy: Since you’re the tip of the spear with customer prospects all day, you’ll understand the market in unique ways. Your insights will help refine the company’s ideal customer personas, define segment-specific commercial strategies, and inform new customer experiments we’ll want to run to build a lean, successful commercial organization. You will prioritize and execute high value partnerships when a straight selling approach isn’t ideal. You’ll also serve as a key internal voice of the customer to ensure our actual offering is well-aligned to market needs. \n* Tell the company story: This is primarily a revenue-focused role rather than brand marketing, but guess what… we don’t have any dedicated marketing people! 😛 Where appropriate, you’ll attend industry conferences for prospect development, contribute to Yard Stick brand awareness in earned media and speaking opportunities, follow and guide market trends, influence key non-customer stakeholders, and broadly participate in the soil carbon sector with authority. \n* Partner for success: Yard Stick’s offering spans hardware, software, soil science, and many other disciplines. You’ll partner with these folks to inform future product features/direction/tech priorities and to accurately scope the technical details of proposals with unique characteristics. This role will focus on scaling our “known” business of soil C stock quantification in row crop and grazing lands in the US, but you’ll allocate a reasonable % of your time to emergent commercial opportunities such as international work, which will require even closer collaboration with Chris, Kelsey, and members of the tech team who best understand what a new project context means for Yard Stick’s technical readiness and feasibility. \n\n\n\nQualifications (Must Have)\n* Demonstrable expertise leading relevant enterprise biz dev, GTM, or early sales efforts. People call this work different things - we don’t particularly care about vocabulary, but we care enormously about expertise. Put simply, you’ve done this job before. You’ve been given an early-stage thing to sell and have successfully sold it at the scale of many millions of dollars. “Relevant” in this case could include various kinds of overall with Yard Stick’s offerings: Services offerings, IRL “field”-based offerings, offerings sold it/to big ag companies, climate offerings, science-y/highly technical offerings, time-based offerings (e.g. something which is inherently recurring like measurement over time or “tracking” offerings), and/or offerings in regulated industries where “standards” and “protocol alignment” are important. You love relational business development where you must get “in the head” of your customer to educate, build trust, and get to yes. You’re not intimidated by education, proposal, and sales processes which can last months (or sometimes years!). You are hungry. You will run through a brick wall to hit your number. \n* Comfort selling in emerging tech risk/complexity contexts. Yard Stick is literally the first company in the history of the world to deploy our technologies commercially. There are significant unknowns (Can we do almonds? What about peat?!?!?) but you can handle that. You will thread the needle with customers regarding what is known vs. not while all the while building trust. You won’t overpromise which risks under-delivery… nor will you get freaked out that we’re naturally building the airplane while we’re flying it. You deftly balance the key goal of getting a customer to “yes” while also being crystal clear about our technology’s more- and less-mature aspects.\n* Excellent management of complex pricing and contracting processes. Offerings like ours which are priced uniquely on a per-customer basis don’t freak you out. You’ll gather the required details, operate and manage internal pricing/scoping tools, and figure out pricing which satisfies both customer willingness to pay and company ops/capacity/financial targets. A 12-page services agreement doesn’t faze you. You’re not a lawyer, but you understand how contracts work and will carefully and patiently trade edits until all parties are happy, pulling in expert support when necessary. Bespoke “enterprise” offerings which are larger in dollar value and smaller in number of deals is your happy place. \n* Flawless organization of complex information. Since you’ll often be the only person with a specific piece of customer/GTM information, documenting, interpreting, and sharing it well is paramount. Doubly so since Yard Stick is a remote-first company. You’re a little obsessive with folder organization and file naming conventions, and you love setting up lightweight systems to make sure everybody can see the right stuff at the right time without always asking you for help. You’ll have to keep track of dozens of leads at varying stages of maturity, and that’s fine - you’ll just design a process to keep it all under control (fwiw we’re spun up on HubSpot already). Notion or similar is your love language. You’re encouraged to learn that Yard Stick has a 10-page internal communication norms document. You write very well. \n* Strong personal independence and entrepreneurial autonomy. You beg forgiveness rather than ask permission. You don’t sit around waiting for the CEO to answer your question, but rather get it done one way or another with what you’ve got. You assess the situation, consider solutions, make a plan, and execute. You tend to get way out ahead of everybody else and anticipate others’ needs well. Ownership and (appropriate) autonomy are key to your fulfillment. Nonetheless, you understand and respect what’s your job and what’s not, and you collaborate deeply and effectively with other teams at Yard Stick. \n* Personal, durable enthusiasm for the challenge of climate change. It matters to you that you’re working on a problem of existential significance. You get fired up by the fact that your work can help avoid others’ suffering. You’re briefly overwhelmed by the scale of the problem... and then you’re right back in the ring doing your part. \n\n\n\nQualifications (Nice To Have)\n* Can start FAST. As mentioned above, we have our twice-annual all-company onsite starting Feb 25, and that’s the ideal start date for this role so they can make all the friends. The right person is much more important than the fast person, but all things equal a candidate who can start sooner (e.g. on Feb 25!) will be more competitive. \n* Prior experience at a high-growth start-up. Yard Stick is a small, young, ambitious company. We move very quickly and have big goals. You understand the pace of early-stage tech startups and can move at a similar pace yourself. Note this is not about work hours per se - most people at Yard Stick work “normal” work hours. An appetite for growth means you know what a high-growth company feels like and expects, and you’re signing up for that experience. \n* Prior experience and/or relationships in agriculture, soil science, carbon markets, land use, MRV, and similar. This isn’t required, but it’d obviously be super helpful to accelerate your time-to-impact at the company. If you already know people who need soil C MRV services, you will be way more attractive as a candidate! \n* Comfort with any aspects of enterprise marketing. Can you write legit sales copy? Design a world-class pitch deck? Give a banger of a keynote? We’d love to know! To be clear, this role will not currently be supported by a marketing person, so you’ll have to do a bunch of this whether you’re an expert or not. You must be “passable” in these domains, but if you’re actually exceptional in any, please say so since that will significantly improve your attractiveness as a candidate. \n* Familiarity with CRM/pipeline systems (e.g. HubSpot). Again not required, but if you don’t have experience with these tools, we’ll need to see evidence of prior work on similar software and would need confidence that you can get up to speed with HubSpot very quickly, since our working assumption is that switching CRM providers is not important in the early days of this role. \n\n\n\n\n\n$170,000 - $250,000 a year• Market salary and equity commensurate with expertise. Directionally, we expect a salary in the range of $170-250k. Bottom end of that range for somebody who’s less experienced but demonstrably hungry and high-growth, higher end for somebody who’s obviously done all this before. We benchmark to 75th percentile of high-growth US tech compensation via Pave, the single largest compensation benchmarking database in the world. Note this is a 100% salary role - no commission. \n• We offer health, dental, and vision insurance via Justworks, our benefits and payroll provider. We contribute 80% of base healthcare plan premiums (regardless of employee plan type (e.g. single vs. family) and 50% of a base dental plan, as well as offer additional contributions to HSAs for employees who select eligible high-deductible plans. \n• We provide unlimited PTO, unlimited sick leave, 6 weeks paid primary caregiver leave, and 4 weeks paid secondary caregiver leave (flexible as to format, eligibility includes surrogacy and adoptive contexts). \n• We offer to extend post-termination exercise periods to 10 years when you leave the company so you don’t get screwed out of your options. \n• Travel expectations are a 3-day all-company onsite twice per year (typically Feb and Sept) plus 2-3 day sector conferences about four times per year. This may change significantly (in either direction) as this role identifies the most valuable ways to show up to conferences to advance the company’s commercial goals.\n• We’ll buy you a computer and provide a work-from-home reimbursement to use how you please. \n• Additional benefits include One Medical, Health Advocate, and Talkspace memberships and a company-sponsored 401k. \n• This role must work primarily in one of the continental US time zones. We have no specific working hours except to “collaborate excellently” within teams - that typically requires overlapping with your teammates at least a few hours per day. \n• We prioritize candidates living in the US. If you live in the US, existing work authorization is required. If you live outside the US, we will consider your application with sincerity, but our very strong preference is US-based team members. \n\nOur Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion\n\n\nYard Stick’s impact goals go well beyond climate science. Why? Our company operates primarily in the US agricultural sector, which is predicated on centuries of mass land theft and disenfranchisement of Native and Black people. This harm continues today. If we’re going to work in this sector, we need to leave it better than we found it.\n\n\nConsistent with our core value of “Pursue Justice,” we talk about these issues publicly, including when it’s uncomfortable, and we also put significant effort into ensuring that our own internal practices are Pursue Justice-aligned:\n\n\n• We standardize our interview process and questions to reduce “likeability” bias when hiring. We benchmark salaries against industry databases to ensure fair pay for all, and we utilize tools like the Gender Decoder to ensure everyone feels welcome to apply. \n\n\n• We work to create an environment where everyone feels confident sharing their ideas, problem-solving happens openly and collaboratively, and where mistake-making is welcomed. We evaluate ourselves against our core values twice-annually and discuss opportunities for improvement candidly as a whole team. Team members are evaluated formally once per year, and executive evaluations are done “360”-style.\n\n\n• Great management is critical in this domain. We’ve formalized our expectations of high-performance management to ensure managers can be held accountable for healthy teams.\n\n\n• We organize lunchtime all-team discussions on issues like labor equity in Florida produce, Pigford v. Glickman (the largest US civil rights settlement in history), whether carbon offsets are “good or bad,” and other contemporary moral concerns in agriculture and climate change.\n\n\nClimate change is arguably the most complex challenge ever faced by humanity - we need all of humanity activated to fight back, and that motivates us to build a diverse, engaged, healthy, supported team. \n\n#Salary and compensation\n No salary data published by company so we estimated salary based on similar jobs related to Design, Marketing and Sales jobs that are similar:\n\n $30,000 — $55,000/year\n
\n\n#Benefits\n 💰 401(k)\n\n🌎 Distributed team\n\n⏰ Async\n\n🤓 Vision insurance\n\n🦷 Dental insurance\n\n🚑 Medical insurance\n\n🏖 Unlimited vacation\n\n🏖 Paid time off\n\n📆 4 day workweek\n\n💰 401k matching\n\n🏔 Company retreats\n\n🏬 Coworking budget\n\n📚 Learning budget\n\n💪 Free gym membership\n\n🧘 Mental wellness budget\n\n🖥 Home office budget\n\n🥧 Pay in crypto\n\n🥸 Pseudonymous\n\n💰 Profit sharing\n\n💰 Equity compensation\n\n⬜️ No whiteboard interview\n\n👀 No monitoring system\n\n🚫 No politics at work\n\n🎅 We hire old (and young)\n\n
\n\n#Location\nCambridge, MA

\nAbout The Role\n\n\nYard Stick is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help us combat climate change with soil. We use spectral imaging and machine learning to measure organic soil carbon, bringing down the cost of soil measurement and creating incentives for better soil management and carbon sequestration.\n\n\nWe are looking for someone who is excited to be part of our mission and part of our small team, working on a wide variety of projects both for our customers and our various internal teams. Most of our work is Python (for the data processing end of things) and Ruby (for the web front end), and we’re looking for someone who is expert in at least one of those stacks (and willing to work in the other).\n\n\nThis role is on our software team, reporting directly to the VP of software, and would work in close coordination with our product teams (data science, hardware, soil science) and our sales, business development, and field teams. This is a full-time, remote position, and we are looking to hire as soon as possible.\n\n\nAbout Yard Stick PBC\n\n\nYard Stick is a remote-first climate tech startup with cofounders based in Boston, MA and Oakland, CA. We are on a mission to reverse climate change with agriculture. Scientists and farmers alike know that climate-friendly agricultural practices have the potential to remove atmospheric CO2 at gigaton/year scale. When these practices are adopted, more carbon is stored in soils, improving soil health and fighting climate change. But significant measurement challenges have held soil carbon efforts back - until now.\n\n\nBy reducing the cost of soil carbon measurement by 70-90%, Yard Stick will dramatically expand the opportunities for evidence-based regenerative practices to simultaneously improve ecosystem health, increase farmer income, and combat climate change. \n\n\nCurrent soil carbon measurement technologies are slow, expensive, and cumbersome, relying on conventional soil cores and labs to quantify carbon stocks. In contrast, Yard Stick is fast and cheap - without sacrificing accuracy. As a testament to our technology’s potential, alongside our scientific collaborators, we were awarded $18M across six USDA Climate-Smart Commodities projects, and we have additional grant financing from ARPA-E, NSF, CDFA, and other discerning grant-makers. We’ve also raised another nearly $18M from top climate VCs, including Toyota Climate Venture Fund, Lowercarbon Capital, Breakthrough Energy Ventures (Bill Gates’ climate fund), Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Extania, Pillar VC, MCJ Collective… the list goes on!\n\n\nFor more background, check out some coverage of Yard Stick in TechCrunch, Fast Company, and AgFunder.\n\n\nWe offer competitive salary and equity (benchmarked to 75th percentile of SF/NYC), health/dental/vision insurance, a 401k, and home-office reimbursements. We have a number of founders and other team members with young families and have a strong track record of creative, flexible approaches to hours and communication expectations which let folks feel great about their commitments both to Yard Stick and their lives outside of work. \n\n\nWe’re also a PBC, or public benefit corporation, which is an alternative corporate structure which protects our ability to prioritize climate impact over profits if the two are in conflict. You can read more about PBCs in this article which also features Yard Stick.\n\n\n\nResponsibilities\n* Work with customers and our business development team to extend our customer portal and API\n* Improve our geospatial project management and planning tools, building sampling plans, visualizing GIS data, and developing new data services as needed\n* Develop and enhance internal tools for data review and quality control on collected and analyzed soil data\n* Develop and improve our data pipeline, machine learning tools, model management, and anything to help our data science team work more efficiently\n\n\n\nQualifications (Must Have)\n* 3+ years of relevant work experience\n* Expertise in web application development, either with a standard Ruby+Rails or Python environment, plus willingness to work in both stacks (since we use both)\n* Work experience producing professional, production quality software\n* Passion for climate impact\n\n\n\nQualifications (Nice To Have)\n* Experience with both of the Ruby and Python stacks mentioned above\n* Experience with data analysis using Jupyter notebooks or similar\n* Ability to design and implement great customer experiences\n* Experience with productionized data processing pipelines\n* Knowledge of GIS data, mapping, pathing, etc.\n* Familiarity with AWS\n* Experience processing data from hardware sensors\n\n\n(None of these are required, but if you have experience in these areas, please highlight it in your application!)\n\n\n$170,000 - $195,000 a yearCompensation and Other Details\n• Market salary and equity commensurate with expertise. Directionally, we expect an annual salary in the range of $170k to $195k. We benchmark to 75th percentile of “Tier 1” city compensation (e.g. SF, NYC).• We offer health, dental, and vision insurance via Justworks, our benefits and payroll provider. We contribute 80% of base healthcare plan premiums (regardless of employee plan type (e.g. single vs. family) and 50% of a base dental plan, as well as offer additional contributions to HSAs for employees who select eligible high-deductible plans.• We provide unlimited PTO, unlimited sick leave, 6 weeks paid primary caregiver leave, and 4 weeks paid secondary caregiver leave (flexible as to format, eligibility includes surrogacy and adoptive contexts).• We offer to extend post-termination exercise periods to 10 years when you leave the company so you don’t get screwed out of your options.• We’ll buy you a computer and provide a work-from-home reimbursement to use how you please.• Additional benefits include One Medical, Health Advocate, and Talkspace memberships and a company-sponsored 401k.• This role can be based anywhere in continental U.S. time zones. We have no specific working hours except to “collaborate excellently” within teams - that typically requires overlapping with your teammates at least a few hours per day. (If resident in the U.S., then U.S. work authorization is required.)\n\nOur Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion\n\n\nYard Stick’s impact goals go well beyond climate science. Why? Our company operates primarily in the US agricultural sector, which is predicated on centuries of mass land theft and disenfranchisement of Native and Black people. This harm continues today. If we’re going to work in this sector, we need to leave it better than we found it.\n\n\nConsistent with our core value of “Pursue Justice,” we speak up about these issues, and we support emerging solutions and relevant policy efforts such as H.R.40 and S.300. We also publicly highlight the risk of further racial discrimination in emerging agricultural legislation like the Growing Climate Solutions Act.\n\n\nRegarding hiring and culture, we work to create a work environment where everyone feels confident sharing their ideas, problem-solving happens openly and collaboratively, and mistake-making is welcomed. We also standardize our interview process and questions to reduce “likeability” bias, benchmark salaries against industry databases to reduce negotiation, and utilize tools like the Gender Decoder. Climate change is arguably the most complex challenge ever faced by humanity - we need all of humanity activated to fight back, and that motivates us to build a diverse team. \n\n#Salary and compensation\n No salary data published by company so we estimated salary based on similar jobs related to Design, Python, Payroll, Ruby, Microsoft, Senior and Engineer jobs that are similar:\n\n $60,000 — $115,000/year\n
\n\n#Benefits\n 💰 401(k)\n\n🌎 Distributed team\n\n⏰ Async\n\n🤓 Vision insurance\n\n🦷 Dental insurance\n\n🚑 Medical insurance\n\n🏖 Unlimited vacation\n\n🏖 Paid time off\n\n📆 4 day workweek\n\n💰 401k matching\n\n🏔 Company retreats\n\n🏬 Coworking budget\n\n📚 Learning budget\n\n💪 Free gym membership\n\n🧘 Mental wellness budget\n\n🖥 Home office budget\n\n🥧 Pay in crypto\n\n🥸 Pseudonymous\n\n💰 Profit sharing\n\n💰 Equity compensation\n\n⬜️ No whiteboard interview\n\n👀 No monitoring system\n\n🚫 No politics at work\n\n🎅 We hire old (and young)\n\n
\n\n#Location\nOakland, CA

Overview\nYard Stick is looking for a Principal Soil Scientist to help us fight climate change with soil. This role is Yard Stick’s first full-time, in-house scientist and an ideal candidate will lead the company’s experimental roadmap, publication strategy, and will be the organization’s primary coordinator of outside scientific collaborations. We are a small company with big ambitions, and therefore we need someone exceptionally entrepreneurial to help us build a mission-driven company alongside Yard Stick’s co-founding team.\n\nYard Stick’s mission is clear: We must replace lab analysis of soil carbon with in situ spectroscopy if carbon removal via soils is to have meaningful climate impact. Beyond markets, of course, improved quality of measurement will also increase our ability to understand the nature of changing soil carbon stocks around the world. Our Principal Soil Scientist will help develop and communicate the scientific basis for Yard Stick’s in-situ soil carbon measurement. In turn, this will enable soil carbon removal at gigaton/year impact across the globe.\n\nThis role will report to the CEO and can be based anywhere in US time zones with a priority for those in the SF Bay Area. It will include modest but fulfilling travel (including potential weeks-long trips to our lab in Oakland, CA for folks not based in the SF Bay Area) and market-rate salary and equity. We roughly expect this role to be 10% field work and 20% bench work, with the balance spent on planning, administration, data analysis, and reporting.\n\nThis is a dream job for an entrepreneurial, creative, adaptive scientist who wants to apply their expertise in a rapidly-growing startup with strong fundamentals and literal planetary-scale impact. This is a nightmare job for someone who has to be told what to do and wants to "work in industry."\n\nWe’d like to hire this person immediately.\n\nAbout Yard Stick PBC\nYard Stick is a remote-first, seed-stage company, with founders based in Boston, Oakland, and Chicago. We are on a mission to reverse climate change with agriculture. Scientists and farmers alike know that climate-friendly agricultural practices have the potential to remove atmospheric CO2 at gigaton/year scale. When these practices are adopted, more carbon is stored in soils, improving soil health and fighting climate change. But significant measurement challenges have held soil carbon efforts back - until now.\n\nBy reducing the cost of soil carbon measurement by 90%+, Yard Stick will dramatically expand the opportunities for evidence-based regenerative practices to simultaneously improve ecosystem health, increase farmer income, and combat climate change.\n\nCurrent soil carbon measurement technologies are slow, expensive, and cumbersome, relying on conventional soil cores and labs to quantify carbon stocks. In contrast, Yard Stick is fast and cheap - without sacrificing accuracy. Alongside our scientific collaborators, we were awarded a $3.6M grant from the DOE ARPA-E Smartfarm program in Fall 2020. For more background, check out some recent coverage in TechCrunch or Treehugger.\n\nWe've also raised money from top climate VCs, including Breakthrough Energy Ventures (Bill Gates' climate fund), Lowercarbon Capital (Chris and Crystal Sacca's climate fund), MCJ Collective, and others. This financing isn’t announced, because that can feel a bit cart before the horse, but we're happy to share more detail about our fundraising when we chat.\n\nWe offer competitive salary, equity for permanent roles, health insurance, a 401k, and home-office reimbursements. In terms of flexible schedules, we have a number of founders and other team members with young families and have a strong track record of creative, flexible approaches to hours and communication expectations which let folks feel great about their commitments both to Yard Stick and their family.\n\nAbout The Role\nThis role will own the scientific worldview of Yard Stick. We need someone who can work cross-disciplinarily with hardware, software, field, and business teams alike to conduct the R&D required to evaluate the effectiveness of Yard Stick’s offerings. This role must be as comfortable with the “brain work” of science (e.g. literature review, expert interviews, experimental design) as the “hand work” of science (e.g. soil sampling alongside our field team, scanning 100s of soil samples in our lab). Parts of the latter may be contracted to part-time team members, as necessary, whom this role would recruit.\n\nTo date, Yard Stick has relied on our Smartfarm co-PIs for scientific leadership. Specifically, our closest relationships are with Dr. Cristine Morgan and Dr. Jason Ackerson at the Soil Health Institute and Dr. Yufeng Ge at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. These three are remarkably talented collaborators who are world experts in soil spectroscopy and related topics whom we treasure… but they also have other responsibilities besides Yard Stick!\n\nYard Stick’s Principal Soil Scientist will improve the quality of our work with these collaborators while also owning scientific responsibilities which are more appropriate for a full-time, in-house team member vs. outside advisor.\n\nCurrently, Yard Stick is focused on proof of concept of our in situ spectral probe. This Principal Soil Scientist will design experiments to validate and refine key R&D questions and publish results alongside our outside scientific collaborators. This work will happen in close collaboration with hardware and data science teams, but ultimately it is this role who will align us with best practices. Yard Stick’s goal is to demonstrate the carbon and bulk density estimation capabilities of our spectral probe via publication-quality research; it’s this research which this role will focus on.\n\nTo thrive in this role, you should be excited by the prospect of reporting directly to the CEO to ensure all actions of the company are informed by the best available science.\n\n\nOur Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion\nYard Stick’s impact goals go well beyond climate science (although our #1 value is Climate Impact). Why? Our company operates primarily in the US agricultural sector, which is predicated on centuries of mass land theft and disenfranchisement of Native and Black people. This harm continues today. If we’re going to work in this sector, we need to actively work to make it better.\n\nConsistent with our core value of “Pursue Justice,” we speak up about these issues, and we support emerging solutions and relevant policy efforts such as H.R.40 and S.300. We also publicly highlight the risk of further racial discrimination in emerging agricultural legislation like the Growing Climate Solutions Act.\n\nRegarding hiring and culture, we work to create a work environment where everyone feels confident sharing their ideas, problem-solving happens openly and collaboratively, and mistake-making is welcomed. We also standardize our interview process and questions to reduce “likeability” bias, benchmark salaries against industry databases to reduce negotiation, and utilize tools like the Gender Decoder (this one is feminine-coded, fwiw). Climate change is arguably the most complex challenge ever faced by humanity - we need all of humanity activated to fight back, and that motivates us to build a diverse team.\n \n\n#Salary and compensation\n No salary data published by company so we estimated salary based on similar jobs related to Travel and Non Tech jobs that are similar:\n\n $60,000 — $95,000/year\n
\n\n#Benefits\n 💰 401(k)\n\n🌎 Distributed team\n\n⏰ Async\n\n🤓 Vision insurance\n\n🦷 Dental insurance\n\n🚑 Medical insurance\n\n🏖 Unlimited vacation\n\n🏖 Paid time off\n\n📆 4 day workweek\n\n💰 401k matching\n\n🏔 Company retreats\n\n🏬 Coworking budget\n\n📚 Learning budget\n\n💪 Free gym membership\n\n🧘 Mental wellness budget\n\n🖥 Home office budget\n\n🥧 Pay in crypto\n\n🥸 Pseudonymous\n\n💰 Profit sharing\n\n💰 Equity compensation\n\n⬜️ No whiteboard interview\n\n👀 No monitoring system\n\n🚫 No politics at work\n\n🎅 We hire old (and young)\n\n
\n\n#Location\nOakland, CA

At Yard Stick, we help farmers get paid to fight climate change. We do so with a category-creating tool for measuring the amount of carbon that is sequestered in soil.\n\nYou may have heard of “regenerative agriculture.” This is a collection of farming and ranching practices (such as no-till or crop rotation) with enormous potential to improve soil health, while pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. However, it is difficult to measure the impact of these practices. Current methods are slow, expensive, and cumbersome. (Think slide-hammer + mailing soil across the country.)\n\nEnter Yard Stick. We believe that accurate, affordable, and fast carbon measurements will fundamentally change both the economics and the legitimacy of agriculture-backed carbon credits. Done right, this will put an entire industry to work in the service of the environment. Everyone talks about software eating the world; here, software just might save the world. For the right person, this is a rare opportunity to build a SaaS platform from the ground-up. We’re venture-backed and ready to grow.\n\nA Bit More About the Role\nYour first task at Yard Stick will be to understand our customers (growers, carbon credit developers) and our offerings. We’re in a complex space. Applying the principles of “Domain Driven Design” will serve you well.\n\nThe features you will build will span from integrating with 3rd party APIs to building customer dashboards, or from standing up a geospatial service through crafting email layouts. We are a team of polyglots. Our web app is written in Ruby on Rails. Services with a heavy geospatial aspect are written in Python. These choices reflect an engineering ethos: the reason we’re writing software is to enable our customers to sequester carbon, therefore we chose the tools that allows us to work most quickly. \n\nOn the topic of speed: smartly scoping features is vital to our near and long term success. You will need to be savvy about tradeoffs, like when to deploy tech debt, when to refactor, or when to do it right the first time. Our software & hardware offerings have begun to find product/market fit. This has given a sense of real world urgency.\n\nThis is a full stack role. To coin a phrase: the smaller team, the fuller the stack. We’re well aware that no one can do everything, so if you lean more front- or backend that is a-okay, as long as you’re okay working outside your comfort zone.\n\nA Bit More About the Company\nYard Stick is a remote-first, seed-phase company, with founders based in Boston, Oakland, and Chicago. Alongside our scientific collaborators, we were recently awarded a $3.6M grant from the DOE ARPA-E Smartfarm program. For more background, check out some recent coverage in TechCrunch or Treehugger.\n\nWe've also raised money from top climate VCs, including Breakthrough Energy Ventures (Bill Gates' climate fund), Lowercarbon Capital (Chris and Crystal Sacca's climate fund), MCJ Collective, and others. It's not announced, because that can feel a bit cart before the horse, but we're happy to share more detail about our financing when we chat.\n\nWe offer competitive salary, equity for permanent roles, health insurance, a 401k, and home-office reimbursements. In terms of flexible schedules, we have a number of team members with young families and have a strong track record of creative, flexible approaches to hours and communication expectations which let folks feel great about their commitments both to Yard Stick and their family.\n\nOn a personal note: before co-founding Yard Stick, I (Evan, head of software) spent almost two years trying to answer the question, “How can my experience in delivering SaaS products be applied to the climate crisis?” Here is where I finally found my answer.\n\nOur Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion\nYard Stick’s impact goals go well beyond climate science (although our #1 value is Climate Impact). Why? Our company operates primarily in the US agricultural sector, which is predicated on centuries of mass land theft and disenfranchisement of Native and Black people. This harm continues today. If we’re going to work in this sector, we need to actively work to make it better.\n\nConsistent with our core value of “Pursue Justice,” we speak up about these issues, and we support emerging solutions and relevant policy efforts such as H.R.40 and S.300. We also publicly highlight the risk of further racial discrimination in emerging agricultural legislation like the Growing Climate Solutions Act.\n\nRegarding hiring and culture, we work to create a work environment where everyone feels confident sharing their ideas, problem-solving happens openly and collaboratively, and mistake-making is welcomed. We also standardize our interview process and questions to reduce “likeability” bias, benchmark salaries against industry databases to reduce negotiation, and utilize tools like the Gender Decoder (this one is feminine-coded, fwiw). Climate change is arguably the most complex challenge ever faced by humanity - we need all of humanity activated to fight back, and that motivates us to build a diverse team.\n\n\n \n\n#Salary and compensation\n No salary data published by company so we estimated salary based on similar jobs related to Senior, Engineer, Developer, Digital Nomad, Ruby, SaaS and Backend jobs that are similar:\n\n $65,000 — $130,000/year\n
\n\n#Benefits\n 💰 401(k)\n\n🌎 Distributed team\n\n⏰ Async\n\n🤓 Vision insurance\n\n🦷 Dental insurance\n\n🚑 Medical insurance\n\n🏖 Unlimited vacation\n\n🏖 Paid time off\n\n📆 4 day workweek\n\n💰 401k matching\n\n🏔 Company retreats\n\n🏬 Coworking budget\n\n📚 Learning budget\n\n💪 Free gym membership\n\n🧘 Mental wellness budget\n\n🖥 Home office budget\n\n🥧 Pay in crypto\n\n🥸 Pseudonymous\n\n💰 Profit sharing\n\n💰 Equity compensation\n\n⬜️ No whiteboard interview\n\n👀 No monitoring system\n\n🚫 No politics at work\n\n🎅 We hire old (and young)\n\n
\n\n#Location\nChicago, IL

Hey there! \n\nAre you interested in Yard Stick, but none of the roles fit? We'd still love to hear from you! \n\nPlease drop us a line introducing yourself. We keep all applicants on file. If we open a role and we think you're a good match, we'll be in touch. \n\nA Bit More About the Company\nYard Stick is a remote-first, seed-phase company, with founders based in Boston, Oakland, and Chicago. Alongside our scientific collaborators, we were recently awarded a $3.6M grant from the DOE ARPA-E Smartfarm program. For more background, check out some recent coverage in TechCrunch or Treehugger.\n\nWe've also raised money from top climate VCs, including Breakthrough Energy Ventures (Bill Gates' climate fund), Lowercarbon Capital (Chris and Crystal Sacca's climate fund), MCJ Collective, and others. It's not announced, because that can feel a bit cart before the horse, but we're happy to share more details about our financing when we chat.\n\nOur Commitment to Equitable Hiring + Culture\nYard Stick’s impact goals go well beyond climate science. Why? Our company operates primarily in the US agricultural sector, which is predicated on centuries of mass land theft and disenfranchisement of Native and Black people. This harm continues today. If we’re going to work in this sector, we need to actively work to make it better.\n\nConsistent with our core value of “Pursue Justice,” we speak up about these issues, and we support emerging solutions and relevant policy efforts such as H.R.40 and S.300. We also publicly highlight the risk of further racial discrimination in emerging agricultural legislation like the Growing Climate Solutions Act.\n\nRegarding hiring and culture, we work to create a work environment where everyone feels confident sharing their ideas, problem-solving happens openly and collaboratively, and mistake-making is welcomed. We also standardize our interview process and questions to reduce “likeability” bias. We benchmark salaries against industry databases to reduce negotiation bias. Climate change is arguably the most complex challenge ever faced by humanity - we need all of humanity activated to fight back, and that motivates us to build a diverse team.\n
\n\n#Benefits\n 💰 401(k)\n\n🌎 Distributed team\n\n⏰ Async\n\n🤓 Vision insurance\n\n🦷 Dental insurance\n\n🚑 Medical insurance\n\n🏖 Unlimited vacation\n\n🏖 Paid time off\n\n📆 4 day workweek\n\n💰 401k matching\n\n🏔 Company retreats\n\n🏬 Coworking budget\n\n📚 Learning budget\n\n💪 Free gym membership\n\n🧘 Mental wellness budget\n\n🖥 Home office budget\n\n🥧 Pay in crypto\n\n🥸 Pseudonymous\n\n💰 Profit sharing\n\n💰 Equity compensation\n\n⬜️ No whiteboard interview\n\n👀 No monitoring system\n\n🚫 No politics at work\n\n🎅 We hire old (and young)\n\n
\n\n#Location\nOakland, CA